President of the Tokyo Foundation. His professional career in government includes budget examiner in MOF's Budget Bureau, head of the Banking Investigation Division in MOF's Banking Bureau, chief of the Nara Prefectural Police Headquarters, and councilor in MOF's Secretariat. He moved to the Defense Agency in 1991, serving as director general of the Defense Policy Bureau and the Finance Bureau, and administrative vice-minister of defense before resigning from the agency in 1998. He was a visiting scholar at the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University in 1999, and was chairman of the Ocean Policy Research Foundation from 2001 to 2012. He has also been a professor at Rikkyo University and, since 2008, visiting professor at the School of International Studies, Peking University.